Chapter 19: The Nerve of War (1/2)

A minute later, Viv stood with some difficulty at the threshold of her tower, with Arthur clinging to her like a koala to its eucalyptus. The courtyard was a scene of utmost savagery. Dismembered crawlers, revenants, and puppeteers lay on the ground in pieces no larger than a chair. She could have walked from one wall to another without ever touching the ground. On the battlements, Solfis was butchering his way through the last foes.

It was a humbling moment.

The reality that a kingdom could fall to monsters in three days had remained a myth until now, something that belonged to the realm of legends. Now, she could clearly believe it. Solfis had himself admitted that he was not even the most dangerous creature around.

She briefly wondered how he would fare against a modern army. A concerted effort could certainly take him down, but at what cost? He was freakishly fast. Worse, his motions were completely unpredictable, going from upright one moment, to head down, left arm planted on the ground and the three other limbs shredding flesh the next. Just watching him made her head spin.

Solfis was quickly done. She saw his yellow glare rest on her for a moment before he went over the wall and the sounds of the massacre resumed.

“Holy shit.”

“Squee…”

Even Arthur’s squeals were subdued.

Cernit walked to the battlement and she followed with the others. A door opened on the side, but it was just the cook who had managed to hide, apparently. It brought the number of surviving soldiers to six. Out of fifteen.

She shook her head and joined the lieutenant to see what was going on.

Turned out, it was more of the same.

Solfis was no longer cleaning everything . He was now making his way to the necromancer duo by cutting a bloody path through the waves of monsters they were throwing at him in desperation. It wasn’t working. What he didn’t kill, he merely used as springboards to move faster.

Eventually, he arrived within reach and the man screamed something she did not quite get. Two rays of black and red energy emerged from the necromancers’ hands at the same time. They struck the golem and he stopped moving.

Slowly, the energy covered the frame in its strange radiance. Cernit frowned and placed a hand on his sheathed sword. Viv touched his shoulder, and shook her head.

“No need.”

The radiance spread and spread. The necromancers kept pouring energy in their beam. Solfis’ chest slowly opened to reveal the core.

The male necromancer screamed words of encouragement.

This went on for a little while, then the spells petered out as the two casters fell to their knees. The red light disappeared and Solfis’ ribcage snapped close.

//ENERGY RESERVES INCREASED TO 9%

//THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION.

He managed to be mocking with a mechanical voice.

The war golem bent his chest forward and struck. His left claw tore the man in half. At the same time, his right foot whipped out and punched the woman’s head off clean.

The horde instantly turned to chaos. They lost focus and direction.

Solfis grabbed a crawler and decapitated it in a slow and gruesome manner. The others jumped away, animated by some instinct of self-preservation. Slowly, the golem made his way back through the fleeing stampede. He ignored the half-broken gate and climbed the sheer wall by simply stepping on it. His claws dug into the old rock like it was made of wet sand.

His gaunt form topped the battlement. The ancient warrior stood before Viv in all his horrific, gore-covered glory. A crimson claw raised above her head, still dripping with the fresh blood of their foes.

//I had missed this, Your Grace.

//Not just battle. Movement. Autonomy.

//Fulfilling the purpose for which I was made by my creator, Irlefen.

His yellow glare descended on her.

//I spent three hundred years stuck in a dead city, killing its erstwhile inhabitants.

//Day after day, the people I had sworn to protect turned into more twisted creatures.

//I saw my reserves dwindle.

//I...really tried.

//I tried so hard, and for so long.

//Then you came.

//And now, you gave me a body, and a new purpose.

Solfis slowly bent, until he was on one knee with a clawed hand gathered in a fist resting on his skeletal chest. His terrifying glare bore into her soul, but Viv was unafraid. She knew he could kill her now, just as she knew that he would never do so. It was a gut feeling, one that came from attending political rallies with her father. She had seen it before.

Fanaticism.

//This unit, no, I, Solfis, swear to repay you for this second life I was granted.

//We will accomplish great things together.

The other humans were staring at the deadly entity before them, unsure as to how to react. Viv lifted a hand, and touched the forehead rune where her bloody fingerprint shone magma red. Something told her that it was no longer just blood.

“I would be dead without you, Solfis, so yes. Together.”

//Together.

The golem stood back fluidly. It walked in its alien yet graceful gait back to the tower before disappearing into the entrance.

The humans, Cernit included, watched him go. Their fearful gazes traveled from her, to the dragonling now wrapped around her shoulders, to a piece of the wall behind her. She turned around and saw that an entire section of the battlements had been… sanded. Heavily. Only naked, polished rock remained over a length of thirty paces, at the very least. Not a corpse or a speck of ash had been left behind.

She recognized the site of her blight spell.

“Hmmm.”

Intimidation: Intermediate 1

Alrighty then.

The day was won, the fort was saved, and victory tasted like carrion and charred meat. The stench stuck like a film on Viv’s tongue as she and the others retrieved pieces of friends from the deserted battlefield. Solfis had retreated to his alcove to conserve energy. It was up to them to drag monsters in a pile before the black mana sneaking in through the breached gate could reach critical mass and reanimate the fallen army. Here and there, they found the remains of fallen comrades. Those were gathered separately, with care.

Viv tried to find Jor, but she soon found the task to be impossible. His remains had been covered by another layer of corpses, all now burning and smoking in a single grey mass. She could not even recognize where exactly she had seen him fall. It all looked the same to her.

They did find Benetti, or what was left of him. She and Cernit gathered the parts with as much reverence as they could manage. Cernit picked up the enchanted sword, still embedded in a dead crawler’s face. He sheathed it and tied a rope around the hilt.

“Family,” he simply said. Viv understood.

“Ir Leias Benetti,” she stated. She thought that he conveyed who he was now, having redeemed himself through the sacrifice of his life. At least, she thought that he had.

“Yes. Ir Leias Benetti,” Cernit replied. He closed his eyes and Viv noticed a tear there. She… could not muster one. The exhaustion of the past few days had fully caught up to her. It left her with sluggish thoughts and a sort of deep wariness that she could not express with words. The past two weeks had been so harrowing, she thought that if she stopped now to think about it, she would fall apart.

They found that the last horse had survived. The necromancers had concentrated their forces on the humans. Or perhaps, they had hoped to gain a mount. It no longer mattered.

It took them an hour to make a pile for the monsters and a line for the lost. They set the pile ablaze with their last flaming bricks. For the lost, they built a pyre with every piece of furniture in the fort, and lit it up. Cernit led the survivors in prayers. She could not follow what he said, but she heard him refer to an entity called Enttiku, who she assumed was a god of the dead.

Quite a few of the men cried. They simply broke down where they stood in a sort of huddle. No attempt to maintain decorum, which she thought was rather nice. She sat at the back feeling a bit awkward and isolated. They were still strangers to her despite the shared ordeal.

The ceremony was over and Cernit let the remaining soldiers take some time to recover. He gestured towards her tower. Once inside, he walked up to Solfis, who had returned to his ‘compact’ form. His two yellow orbs were on them as they came in. Cernit almost sat on her bed in his tiredness, but he changed his mind at the last moment and took a chair instead.

The old knight collapsed and stayed there for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. Viv dropped Arthur on her bed in the meanwhile. Her companion looked a bit bothered, she coiled in her usual spot, but her eyes remained open and cautious.

After a minute, Cernit started to talk and Solfis translated.

The old knight explained that, with the fort breached, the enchantments keeping the black mana at bay could not be repaired with what they had on hand. The tower itself ran on a separate spell and could protect people, but he would not force the eight of them plus Arthur to live in this limited space together for the six weeks left before the scheduled change of guards, living on cold food. They had done their duty. It was time for others to do theirs.

Cernit explained his plan. He would leave the next day at dawn with Viv and her ‘followers’, trailing the sled behind them. Viv would keep the dead at bay and they would travel out of the deadlands. Cernit offered to drop her near the closest city, named Kazar. He would go on to the nearest base of the church of Neriad and report on the incident. Before Viv could ask, he explained that there would be ample interrogation and that she might as well be spared the hassle.

//Some members of the church follow paths that let them discern honesty from lies.

//They will be called to intervene in this instance.

//The thorough interrogation of knight Cernit will be enough to assuage their doubts.

//Some may still seek to talk to you, out of concern for safety.

//It will be a low priority task

//However, if you go there directly, you will be held until interrogated.

//It was standard practice three hundred years ago as well.

“I am an unknown spellcaster who arrived here through mysterious means. Would they not consider me a high risk?”

//With all due respect, Your Grace, you may be overestimating the danger you represent.

//Cernit can attest that you do not follow the path of necromancy, and that you helped soldiers of the church at risk to your own life.

//If things are the same as they used to be, you remain a minor concern.

“Compared to what?”

//Compared to a gravid redfin lizard eating an entire village, for example.

“You just made that up.”

//No, Your Grace, that was my third deployment.

“Oh.”

Viv expressed her support for the idea, and Cernit ran outside. The soldiers started to move the remaining furniture outside and replace it with roll upon roll of covers which they spread on the ground to create a sleeping space. A partition was brought upstairs, to the lookout, to create latrines. The men then piled supplies and water in the corridor and through the stairs in preparation for their stay. The mood was morose, yet there was a general sense of relief that it was over.

Viv packed her stuff and reorganized the sled. Solfis walked himself to the makeshift construct, and settled in the ‘optimal position’, as he said himself. His few steps caused all humans present, except for Viv, to freeze in their tracks. Arthur grabbed her cover in her maw and remade her own nest at the back, squealing cutely at people passing too close. She really was like a wild kitten who only tolerated one human.

After dinner, Cernit gave her a pack filled with stuff. There were the official documents he had promised listing her as a mercenary in the service of the Church of Neriad, Baranese branch. He had also written a letter of recommendation in his native language that he asked her not to read in front of him with a light blush. She figured that it was stellar and that the proud knight was a bit shy. Finally, he handed her a fat purse filled with metal. It clinked nicely when she held it.

“Money,” he helpfully told her. She checked the contents and saw the glint of gold.

“You gave more,” she remarked. More than they had agreed on.

Cernit tried to explain but soon gave up and they returned to Solfis. Followed another discussion, where Cernit explained that they would receive a prize for slaying the necromancers and that this was simply her share. He had given her Jor and Benetti’s money and assured her that their family would receive the full amount. He would sort it out with the Church. That was fine.

The night was difficult for Viv. The others had let her keep the partition up, for which she was grateful, but their snores and whimpers stopped her from resting despite her exhaustion. It brought her back to the first few days of boot camp when she was not yet exhausted enough to immediately fall asleep. She woke up several times with a jolt, only to remember that she was no longer alone in the deadlands, and that other sounds were no longer revenants trying to gut her.

Or, at least not tonight.

They departed at dawn. Solfis stood up for ten seconds and cut a path through the wall of ashy limbs blocking their way outside of the gates, then they went down the ramp at a slow pace. The horde had almost fully dispersed, though the concentration of revenants was still high. There were no signs of elites, and Solfis explained that powerful revenants disliked sunlight.

Viv was still tender from the previous day’s exertion, and she preferred to kill the revenants in their path one by one. The spell was no longer taxing for her.

They stopped where the pair of necromancers had fallen. Their bodies were too damaged to turn to revenants, or at least not without months of energy seeping into the husks. Cernit climbed down and returned with two heads, placing the grisly trophies in a bag he attached to his saddle.

That was fucked up.

But hey, who was she to judge.

They moved on a bit until Cernit stopped at another spot. At first, she thought that what she saw were some of the debris the horde had left in its dispersal, but she was wrong. It was a very basic camp. They found some food, which was in an even worse state than what they had. They also found a few memorabilia bearing a sigil, which Cernit kept.